Growing Your Business With Social Media - Social Media Club Evansville

Social Media Club Evansville Growing Your Business with Social Media Jay Lane, Jay Lane Media LLC [email_address] March 15, 2010

Are You Invisible?
If someone were to “Google” you, your company or your type of product/service, what would come up in the search results?

There are several things you can do to increase your chances of being found:
Develop a good content generation strategy ( Share your expertise) .
Create the following:
Facebook company page: www.facebook.com/pages/
LinkedIn personal and business profiles: www.linkedin.com
Google business and personal profiles: google.com/profiles
All of the items listed above get indexed by search engines and provide quick paths to you
Make Yourself Findable

Example Search Results Facebook page LinkedIn company profile LinkedIn profile Google profile

Nine Ways to Share Your Expertise (and be Found)

Set up a blog
Free Hosted (joesblog.blogspot.com):
www.WordPress.com , www.Blogger.com
Standalone (www.joesblog.com):
www.WordPress.org
Generate rich content – Content is king
The search engines love blogs
Educate – Don’t sell
Commit to a regular schedule
Create an RSS feed
Google Feedburner: http://feedburner.google.com
#1) Start a Blog

What’s a screen cast? A short three - five minute video covering a particular subject matter or demonstrating how to do something
Captures what you’re doing on screen with audio
Upload video to YouTube.com and then embed it in your Web site/blog post
What you need to get started:
Headset with microphone, $20-$25 cost
Software
Camtasia Studio (~$300): www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp
CamStudio (Open-Source): www.camstudio.org
Screenr (Instant Screencasts for Twitter): www.screenr.com
#2) Create a Screen Cast

#3) Share Your PowerPoint Presentations
Put your presentations
online so others can view,
download and share them
SlideShare: www.SlideShare.net
Connect SlideShare to your LinkedIn profile
Use a SlideShare plugin for WordPress to embed presentations within a Web site or blog page: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/slideshare/

Distribute a regular email newsletter with tips, tricks and other value-added information
Use an email service provider (ESP) to send emails
Constant Contact: www.constantcontact.com
iContact: www.icontact.com
My Emma – www.myemma.com
Electric Mail – www.electricmail.com
MailChimp – www.mailchimp.com
Do NOT distribute via Microsoft Outlook (no tracking data, subscriber management, or CAN-SPAM compliance)
Sales pitch (if any) should be very soft
Make sure subscribers can share the content via their social media profiles
#4) Publish an Email Newsletter

Write a book about a particular subject matter and offer it as a .pdf download on your Web site
The E-Book should be available for FREE and without registration (don’t require visitors to give an email address)
Becomes a great marketing tool
Write about something that will excite your Web site/blog visitors and make them want to share it with others
#5) Write an E-Book

LinkedIn Answers - www.linkedin.com/answers
Feature a variety of categories and sub categories: Advertising and Promotion, Business Development, Graphic Design, Mobile Marketing, Public Relations, Sales, Search Marketing, Writing and Editing
Great way to establish yourself as an expert
#6) Answer Questions at LinkedIn Answers

Be helpful. Don’t hard sell yourself or your services
Comment on others’ blogs
Share other people’s content
Link to other’s blogs / content
“ Re-Tweet” content on Twitter
Participate in message board conversations
Monitor the conversations
Google Alerts: www.google.com/alerts
Twitter: http://search.twitter.com
#7) Participate in the Community

Some great ways to distribute your content:
Blog RSS feed
Facebook status updates
Twitter
LinkedIn status updates
Your email newsletter
Automate the process
Download TweetDeck @ www.tweetdeck.com
Automatically push content to your Twitter feeds, Facebook (profile/company page) and LinkedIn
Publish your blog’s RSS feed on your FB company page & LinkedIn profile
#8) Distribute Your Content

Promote your social media profiles
Your Web site/blog
Email signatures
Traditional marketing efforts
Add some popular buttons/plugins to your Web site/blog:
ShareThis: www.sharethis.com
Tweet This: www.tweetmeme.com
Facebook Share: Get URL from Google
#9) Make it Easy for People to Share Your Content

Use URL shorteners to shorten long Web site addresses for social media sites such as Twitter & Facebook that restrict characters
URL shorteners provide basic usage data (i.e. # of clicks):
Some example URL shorteners include:
www.bit.ly
www.tinyurl.com
www.is.gd
Use URL Shorteners to Simplify Things http://www.jaylane.com/2010/02/26/how-to-exclude-your-internal-company-traffic-from-google-analytics/ http://bit.ly/dBB69f

Use Google Analytics to track blog/Web site activity (visits, page views, average time on site, etc.)
Go to www.google.com/analytics
Set up Web site profile & get tracking code
Insert tracking code into your Web site/blog pages
Use Google URL Builder tool to track incoming links to your Web site/blog:
http://www.acmecompany.com/ ? utm_source =facebook& utm_medium =link& utm_campaign =FB_Page
utm_source – Used to identify the source of the link
utm_medium – Used to identify the medium (link, email, ppc)
utm_campaign – Used to identify a specific campaign in Google Analytics
Track What You Can With Google Analytics

You can use Google Analytics and a shortened URL to get more accurate data about your Web site/blog visitors
Follow these steps:
Use Google’s URL builder to create your tracking link
Input the tracking link at www.bit.ly to create a shortened URL ( http://bit.ly/n0tr3al )
Include the shortened URL in your Tweet or FB status update
When someone clicks on your shortened URL they will be redirected to your tracking URL
You’ll get lots of good data about the people that clicked your link
Combine Google Analytics & URL Shorteners for More Accurate Tracking

Start small and do a few things really well before expanding your efforts…don’t overwhelm yourself
Commit resources and time to be successful
Check out blogs/online resources – learn from what others are doing
Don’t be afraid to get out there and try some things
Use Google Analytics to track Web site/blog visitor activity so you can know what’s working and what’s not
Final Thoughts…

Questions?
Let’s Connect!
Email: [email_address]
Twitter: @JayLane
Web: JayLane.com
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/jaylanelouisville

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Growing Your Business With Social Media - Social Media Club Evansville

by Jay Lane on Mar 16, 2010

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